About Jim Wooten

About Author Jim WootenAfter more than forty years as a national reporter and a foreign correspondent both for print and broadcast, Mr Wooten left ABC News in November of 2005 and immediately began work on his fourth book.

During his time as a journalist, he had filed from more than 80 countries on a variety of assignments ranging from war and revolution to famine and flood as well as covering eight presidential campaigns and 16 national nominating conventions.

He began his career with The Huntsville ( Ala.) Times, continued with The New York Times, where he was the chief of its Southern Bureau and its White House correspondent, and The Philadelphia Inquirer where he was a thrice-weekly columnist and at Esquire. In 1973, he covered the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East. In 1979, he joined ABC News and over the next 26 years reported from the White House, the United States Senate and was assigned to various presidential campaigns, including those of Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton and Robert Dole.

In 1991, he was a combat correspondent in the first Persian Gulf War, embedded with the Third Armored Division on its attack from Saudi Arabia into Iraq and eventually Kuwait. From 1993 through 1995, he reported frequently from Bosnia, spending considerable time in its besieged capital, Sarajevo. In 1997, he was posted to London and reported from various European and Asian countries, including Russia and Chechnya. Other assignments took him to South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zaire (now Congo) Kenya, Uganda and in 1995 into the genocide of Rwanda. In 2003, he returned once again to the Persian Gulf for the American invasion of Iraq and the march to Baghdad. He returned to Washington shortly thereafter.

He has won numerous awards for his work, including several Emmys, the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the Ernie Pyle Award for combat reportage, as well as an Overseas Press Club Award and others from Harvard, Columbia and Georgetown universities. Ben Bradlee described him as "the best storyteller on television," and David Halberstam called him "the best foreign correspondent of his generation."

His books include a political biography of Jimmy Carter, an account of the Vietnam War and the story of a young AIDS victim in South Africa.

Mr Wooten, who resides in Washington, D.C., is married to Patience O’Connor. They have five daughters and eight grandchildren.